It Chooses You by Miranda July Read Free Book Online Page A

protected me; it’s always embarrassing to pin a tail onto thin air, nowhere near the donkey. It might be wrong, it sure looks like it is — but then again, maybe the donkey’s in the wrong place, or there are two donkeys, and the tail just got there first.

PAM
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PHOTO ALBUMS
$10 EACH
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LAKEWOOD
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    Pam could not believe we were seeing her house when it was such a mess. We assured her that it looked very clean, which it did — clean and chaotically filled with art. Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy, The Hunt of the Unicorn , and various other familiaresque images had been meticulously re-created in needlepoint, by Pam, over the years. We settled ourselves around a large stack of albums and I lifted one onto my lap.
Miranda: Where did these come from?
Pam: One of my friends, he has a friend, and that friend have a big sale. I keep looking at the first album and the second one, and I said, “Oh my god, that’s interesting. I wish I could go on vacation like this lady here.”
    As she talked I flipped though the album, and then another one. They were all filled with pictures of the same wealthy white couple — beginning with their wedding in the ’50s and ending with the last of their cruises.
Pam: These people, they are going all over the world. To Greece and Italy and Japan, and it is gorgeous wherever. It really is nice, and someday maybe I wish I can go, but no money this time. My life, I get married so young and I have no time for vacation. And I say, Well, I can look at this pictures — is better than no vacation.
Miranda: So you don’t know these people?
Pam: No, I don’t know the people, but I don’t want the albums to be thrown away. I keep almost like ten years actually, in my house.
    I glanced at her, wondering if she was a bit of a hoarder. She wore a pink sleeveless top, not unlike Michael’s, and her baroque decorating style made her seem older than she was. I guessed she was forty-eight. An exhausted forty-eight.
Miranda: What do you imagine their life was like?





Pam: I think they have very, very good life. Nice, happy life, actually, if you living that long.
Miranda: Yeah, they’re pretty old in some of these.
Pam: Yeah, is very, very old, and is nice not only that they go, but it is nice to see them be happy with each other. Look at him, and he is just smiling, and it’s nice. I always feel so good to see somebody really happy.
Miranda: Do you think they died pretty old?
Pam: Yeah, I think the lady is like ninety-five and the guy ninety, yeah.
Miranda: I’m surprised their kids wouldn’t have taken these. Wouldn’t you think —
Pam: They don’t have kids, yeah. They don’t have kids.
Miranda: So when did you move from Greece? How old were you?
Pam: I was seventeen. I got married and I come here, and then after I had three kids.
Miranda: Right away?
Pam: Yeah, after a year.
Miranda: So you were eighteen. And what did you do?
Pam: We work in restaurants, fixing food.
Miranda: So you had a restaurant?
Pam: Yeah. Twenty years one, and thirteen years another one.
Miranda: Wow — so twenty-three years.
Pam: Yeah, thirty-three years.
Pam: Right, thirty-three. What would you do in the restaurant? What was your job?
Pam: My job was waitress, service, cashier — talk to the people, you know.
Miranda: Do you have a computer?
Pam: No. I don’t know computer. I wish to know it, but I don’t know.
    Pam opened another album, and as we looked at pictures of the rich, white strangers on a boat, I had the queasy feeling that I was Pam, in reverse. She’d invented all kinds of happiness for these people who seemed boring to me, while her immigrant story struck me as inherently poignant and profound. And probably neither of us was entirely wrong; it’s just that we were, more than anything, sick of our own problems.
Miranda: Have you ever run another ad in the PennySaver ?



Pam: No.
Miranda: And why do you think you decided to do this now?
Pam: Because you know what, I need the room.
Miranda :